(no subject)
It was well past six when he returned home. The heavy earthy brown parka draping his broad shoulders, beneath, the gold and onyx uniform of a Starfleet officer, few career engineering officers wore black uniforms, and even fewer of them wore a Special Forces collar device. Few engineers could manage to ride the grueling Ranger curriculum to its completion fewer still could hack the Special Forces basic course. His shoes were muddy from the short walk from the driveway to the covered porch outside of their new house. It lacked the grandeur of Seven Clovers, but was possessive of an unmistakable small town mystique. Earth brown Venetian blinds inset within double paned windows. The entirety of the lower floor was done up in a cream white, the wood floors old oaken, covered by thick rugs. A fire was already a-blazing in the old hearth. With its heavy granite stoned mortared with smaller stones.
The living room was dominated by a pair of long leather couches, long enough to accommodate his six foot three frame on nights when he didn’t sleep in the master bedroom further down the hall and up the stares adjoining the living room. By now, dinner was cold and the night was heavy over the high Rockies that could be glimpsed form just beyond the front porch. He slipped out of his shoes and into a pair of softer than sin brown slippers, deposing his brown leather attaché case on the old antique hall seat just beyond the front door, Jack moved to t the little mail box just off from the entry hall. His fingers brushed over isolinear chips in half a dozen hues, bills, advertising, chain letters… and at last he found a single glossy twelfth of a volume. The name of the magazine was written across the front in bold blocky black letters, each month the cover would be adorned with the scantily clad, or scarce clad figure of another starlet or model.
And this month.
Jack O’Shey gaped. There, upon a cover of glossy black, cream and scarlet, was his princess with her tiara, teddy, blankey…. And precious little else, his stomach twisted as though someone had just stuck a knife into it. And when at last the centerfold … unfolded and he saw her in…. in … he couldn’t look.
“Dilinn Veronica O’Shey! Front and Center!!!!”